Irreverently Relevant

2021 is barely 3 months in and already there has been an attempted armed insurrection in the US capitol, a polar vortex that crippled Texas, and a US covid death rate of 519K. For the state of Texas, this has happened before, most recently in 1989 and, in 2011 when natural gas plants reported failures that resulted in rolling blackouts. The state of Texas has a GDP of $1.9 trillion with a capital "T," and still could ill-afford to deal with Winter. According to IMF info, Texas has a larger economy than Brazil (which comes in at 10th at $1.84 trillion), South Korea, and Canada.  While Gross Domestic Product is not an accurate measure of development (unlike HDI, GINI, and per capita income), Texas has always been a state on the move, with some of the world's largest corporations setting up shop in the state, most notably Oracle and Hewlett Packard. Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, also set up in Austin TX.  This is the state with the second largest GDP (after California) in the ...

Vietnam: 35 covid19 casualties throughout the duration of the pandemic.¹ Other countries such as New Zealand, Samoa, and Tonga, are doing, well, pretty fine. The latter two are presumably covid free having reported no cases of the virus.  Looking at those countries, one would likely assume that total isolation and draconian restrictions on movement are the best way to contain the contagion. Maybe, and no. Argentina, once one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and with a per capita GDP higher than that of a Japanese empire in the process of implementing the Meiji restoration, now has poverty rate of close to 47%.² Now Argentina is a country which seems as addicted to the pain of crises like it's some sort of sexual fetish. This time though, the country has been subject to what may now be termed as the "world's longest quarantine."  This has devastated an economy that's already devastated. Axalta Coating Systems, BASF, and French auto parts maker Saint-Gobain Sekur...

Once upon a time, long ago in 2018 in the land of Uganda, the president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, actually attempted to ²ban oral sex. His premise was that the mouth was "only for eating." Well, that's actually true. You can eat out, eat well, and eat every day. In a pretty roundabout way, one could infer that this clueless tyrant was actually right! The same country was in the process of directing ISPs to block pornographic websites, notwithstanding the onerous and draconian nature of the enforcement of that law. Virtual private network services coupled with other "anti-snoop" software like the tor browser would make such policing untenable, unless one were to install monitoring software on each and every end-user's device (which actually failed in China after such an attempt was made).  These laws, if they can thus be christened, are driven by the narrow moral scope of religious leaders. Religion, mainly Christianity and Islam, plays an intrusive role even ...

Ok, here we go slipping and sliding headlong into the maeltrom of the most controversial yet enduring facets of humanity. A little apprehensive? Maybe. Well, why not; for nothing is beyond the realms of discussion, especially when it's so indelibly stitched into the human fabric. God made man in his own image, and Allah summoned Mohammed to haeven on a winged horse. There should be a mention of YWHW destroying humanity in a manner also described in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Thats a bit of a mouthful for a start. Where would social and scientific norms be without religion? Does religion dictate morality? The answer to this a vague "it depends." In Shitoism, a sexual orgasm is handled pretty much as a state of spirtual enlightenment. Try talking about sex in coservative Abrahamic faith circles and the disapproval will have you crossing over Mecca and Jerusalem and all the way to the most hedonistic clubs of Berlin. Should it be thus though? Humanity not only loves s...